The Pharmaceutical Aerosol Engineering Lab in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering invites applications from well qualified individuals for a Postdoctoral Fellowship. The delivery of medications through the inhalation route provides a number of advantages including rapid uptake, reduced side effects, and direct access to the blood stream and brain without the use of needles. However, existing inhalers are highly inefficient with 30-90% of the medication wasted when administered to adults and 90-99% wasted when administered to children. Our group employs a combination of CFD simulations with in-house in vitro and in vivo experiments to:

-Develop a new generation of high efficiency inhalers for adults and children -Target aerosol delivery within the lungs -Evaluate the performance of inhalers in terms of local lung delivery -Develop novel inhalation therapies

Applications of these devices and delivery techniques include improved treatments for lung and other diseases such as asthma, COPD, CF, lung cancer, respiratory tract infections, and Alzheimer's. This open project relates to the delivery of asthma medications to the small airways, inhaled antibiotics, and the development of complete-airway CFD models with in vivo validation.

More information on the Longest Lab at VCU can be found at: https://sites.google.com/a/vcu.edu/longestlab/

Funding for the Longest Lab currently comes from NIH and US FDA sources.

The Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department at VCU offers a highly interdisciplinary research experience, which is essential for the study of multiphase respiratory dynamics. Areas of expertise include transport modeling, computational fluid dynamics, life science engineering, and pharmaceutics. This project is being performed in collaboration with the VCU Department of Pharmaceutics, which is located on the VCU Medical Campus. The VCU Department of Pharmaceutics is widely recognized for its Aerosol Research Group, which specializes in the area of respiratory drug delivery, and organizes the international RDD Conference series (http://www.rddonline.com/) each year.

Applicants should hold a PhD engineering degree with a GPA of 3.5 or higher and have a strong interest in medical applications of engineering. Experience with CFD simulations and development of CFD user routines is required. Experience with complex mesh generation and biomedical applications is highly desirable.

Virginia Commonwealth University is the Commonwealth of Virginia's largest university, enrolling the most diverse student body in Virginia, with more than 31,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students and employing more than 18,000 faculty and staff. VCU is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research University - Extensive, receiving over $250M in externally funded awards, including approximately $90...M in funding from NIH in the past 12 months. Thirty-Three of VCU's graduate and professional programs are ranked by U.S. News and World Report as among the best in the nation, with two ranked first in the country. The VCU Health System, which includes the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals, has 1000 inpatient beds and is ranked in the top 100 U.S. hospitals. The VCU Institute for Women’s Health is one of eighteen facilities designated as a National Center for Excellence in Women’s Health by the US DHHS. VCU is closely affiliated with the adjacent Virginia Biotechnology Research Park.

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